Due Process Defeat or National Security Victory?
"Making good on his promise to leave his adopted country after 28 years rather than stay and feel like a second-class citizen, Abdul Moniem El-Ganayni and his wife caught a flight out of Pittsburgh on Wednesday en route to Cairo.
The Egyptian-born physicist, a U.S. citizen since 1988, lost his security clearance late last year, along with his job at the Bettis nuclear propulsion lab in West Mifflin, where he'd worked since 1990.
The clearance was revoked by order of Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy energy secretary. He said he had "reliable information" that Dr. El-Ganayni was a security risk but refused to let him see any evidence or defend himself.
The scientist filed a federal lawsuit seeking an independent review, charging retaliation for statements he made opposing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's post-9/11 treatment of Muslims. He said the government invoked national security as a smokescreen to hide its lack of evidence."
SALLY KALSON in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
[Here's a link to the court's order dismissing the case, and the determination by the Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman.]